


Richie Takes A Bath

by jonesyslug



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonesyslug/pseuds/jonesyslug
Summary: Richie ponders what he has lost and what he might stand to lose in Derry.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Richie Takes A Bath

**Author's Note:**

> I just have it so fucking stuck in my head that Richie and Stan both grew up knowing they liked boys and they knew this about each other and so Richie sort of held it in his heart, they were a team. Stan didn't have the language or experience when they were kids to explain that he was bi, and that confuses Richie too. Sorry I'm totally going off on a tangent in the begining note when you're smart enough to pick up on this stuff in the text I'm just fucking emotional and I've been awake for 20 hours.

Richie's hand curled around the knob of the faucet, gracelessly curving each finger individually around the porcelain. 

He shoved it backwards quickly, with too much strength, expecting it to snap, but only being met by the forceful push of an immovable object. 

No, he wasn't strong enough to break the plumbing with his emotions, leave that to someone else. Even in this ancient place, he was not stronger than his environment. 

He sat there, curled up in the tub, chin against his knees, thinking. He'd let the water run for so long that it had gone tepid, despite the fact that he was in a God damned hotel. An inn. A townhouse. Whatever. Things here didn't work the way they did back home. 

_Back home._ Wasn't _this_ technically "back home"? He hated that. 

It meant that at the end of the day, there was nowhere left to go. That if everything crumbled to ruin, there was no soft landing place. Being here just made him realize that everything he was afraid of was true. 

Hadn't he learned as much, already? 

Long before Stan ever pulled out a razor blade, Richie Tozier would have told you it'd be _him_ bleeding out onto the floor if he ever had to go back to Derry.

So why _was_ he here, alive, and for lack of a better adjective, somewhere in the realm of well? Why was it Stan and not him who was being put in the ground right now?

Because Stan knew damn well, too. Knew exactly what he knew. Every fucking thing he knew, as if they hadn’t talked about it a million and one times. Hushed tones, alone, only alone, when they managed to get away from everyone, and even if they didn’t want to talk about it, it always came up. 

Always.

Stan had seen it in the lights, when the jaw of the old woman was around his face. Three floating lights. Past, present, and future, Stan had said. Some of the stuff he said to Richie were things he already knew, but Stan knew them in excruciating details. Not just names and dates. Emotions. 

It always came up. 

“Stan, why did you leave me alone here with this?” Richie asks the thick, humid air hanging around him.

He runs a hand through his hair, all thick and frizzy from the damp air, hanging too densely on his forehead, sweat and steam mixing together there and holding it to him.  
  
He doesn’t know why he even fucking bothered. All he’s done since he’s gotten here is think about leaving, talk about leaving, try to leave. Why even show up?

Because. Because there was a chance he’d see-

“Fuck.” He whispers. Every time he’d mentioned leaving, Eddie had been right there with him, ready to get a ride to the airport, and maybe they’d have a few drinks, and-

_And what?_

**_Eddie Kaspbrak, someone’s wearing your ring._ **

Married. To a woman. Eds. His Eds.

Not his Eds. Everyone’s Eds just as much as his, and he’d have to fucking accept that now.

Whatever little spark of hope he’d had, as shrouded in fear as it was, it was gone. Extinguished. He had no reasonable hold or claim to Eddie and yet…

_What? What, Richie?_

**_I can’t let him go._ **

Eds married to a woman just like Stan had been. It was hardly the most _pressing_ issue, to ask, "Since when has Stan had a _wife?"_ , when Bev got off the phone. Because it mattered even less than Eddie having a wife. At least Eddie still existed. Stan was just...

Richie let himself fall back into the lukewarm water, full force of his sudden dead weight hitting his head against the tile behind him. 

_Well, fuck, well, ow, well does it matter?_

Maybe he would bleed out in a tub, after all. It’d just be in this godforsaken place, instead of his loft back in LA, where no one’d find him for days. 

He wondered who would find him if he died in here, and before the question was even fully formed, his mind had the answer. It’d be Bev. For a lot of reasons, it’d be Bev, and he hated that. How fucking much was she going to have to go through?

She didn’t even make him pretend not to notice the bruises on her wrist earlier, when it’d just been them. The absence of a ring on her finger, despite the mention of a husband. Pale little sliver on her ring finger where it used to be. 

And the thing she’d said, she’d seen them all die… What the fuck was that? What the fuck was in the deadlights? How long had she just lived with that? Were there things even Stan was too scared to tell him? Did Stan fucking _know_ it was going to turn out like this? Did he bail because he knew they were all dead either way? How could either of them have lived with that? How could Bev even talk to them without bursting into tears? 

She’d had to look at all of them after, knowing…knowing...

_“How do I die, Bev? How do I die?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I- Richie, I can’t just-”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Bev, you know something, why can’t you tell me?”_ _  
_ _  
_ He’d have felt bad about making her cry if he hadn’t been crying first.

She couldn’t tell him, of course not. Why did he expect anything less? She’d seen them all die. Not just him. She hadn’t told them way back when, when they were all still so close and they’d made it out alive, and they’d be able to write it off. Back when they could just have looked her in the eyes _(Her blank, white eyes_ . _Her deadlights_.) and told her the clown was just trying to scare her, and it was all over. When they could have believed that and gone home and slept well. 

Not now. Not this time. One down, six to go. 

They were all fucking doomed. If Stan couldn’t even make it into town, how were the rest of them supposed to make it into the _sewer_? 

No, Richie was sure he was going to die in some pitiful way before they even saw the clown. 

He traced his finger lightly over his shoulder, feeling the incredibly small valleys and bumps of scars there. He can never remember who said it, but he remembers the words…

_("No one worries if you're wearing short sleeves.")_

And no one did. No one asked. No one ever even _saw_ them, really. The few times someone had, they hadn't asked or mentioned them. 

He'd quit for long stretches of time, and then- he hissed as his fingers ran over a fresh cut. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He was such an idiot. Always had that pocket knife on him, and _why?_ He hadn't even remembered Stan had given it to him until this morning. It was just a Boy Scout pocket knife he was mysteriously in possession of since childhood. 

He'd carried it around all the time and there were no problems and then he turned 15 and it was like something in him just _clicked_ and shifted out of place. Whatever was holding him together couldn't anymore. 

He'd thought about it many times before then. Placated himself with little substitutions because he was too scared. Little things that no one would notice, things that wouldn't leave marks. And then highschool really and properly broke him and he remembered… the first time he'd done it. Boy's bathroom on the second floor. It was spring, and he'd cut himself right in the middle of his forearm because he wasn't thinking. 

_("Shoulders or thighs, no one will see. I cut my chest. If you're that obvious with it you just seem like you're an attention seeker.")_

Who the fuck had said that to him? Who had said it? He thought he remembered black lipstick and a tee shirt for The Cure but then, that seemed so cliche, he _must_ have made it up. 

Richie _was_ an attention seeker, but he didn't want attention over _this._ No one was supposed to know about _this._

This was one of the things that was going to die with him. It felt like so many things were going to die with him that he wondered if it wouldn't be better to get it over with sooner rather than later. 

But he was here. He was back in Derry. Stan had already bailed. Could Richie really do that to his friends, now? Add to their immeasurable grief? 

It occurred to him that _yes, technically_ no one was literally stopping him from doing that. But what if they really could… _stop_ It? What if they really could kill it? 

_Have some of this, and some of that, and here's one for Stanny Boy!_

If he was so miserable that he was thinking about ending it, he might as well go out swinging. If he could save _anyone,_ anybody at all, then at least his death could mean something. 

And that was more than he'd ever dared hope for in the past. 

He thought about dying to save Eddie. About getting what he wanted but maybe having something big not die with him. Maybe Eddie would realize. Eddie could realize and live with it in his heart and just observe it. He wouldn't have to take action on it with Richie gone. Wouldn't have to turn him down or turn away from him. 

Maybe he could just _know_ and that would be enough. 

Or maybe they'd all make it out. Maybe they'd kill It and- and- 

And then what? Derry would be safe, but what would _he_ do?

_Just start a new day. Again. Again. Again._

He got out of the tub and dried himself off. He put on boxers and a tee shirt, then picked his jacket up off the floor and rooted around in the pocket. 

He pulled out a small notebook and thumbed through the pages full of tally marks. When he got to a blank page, he took the pen off the desk and wrote the date at the top of the page. He added one tally mark. 

_Start again._

His shoulder wasn't stinging from the soap anymore. 

_Start again. Yesterday is over. Start. Again._

He flipped the notebook shut and crawled into bed. He thought of that stupid old movie his mother had taped off of PBS, and all the beautiful lines in it. 

_"Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it."_

Hadn't the main girl said something like that? Even if she hadn't… it was true. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This mostly came about because of Richie screaming "Am I gonna go missing?" and people saying it was directed at him and a big fear for him because he knew about Derry's violent homophobic past, and Stan obviously knew Richie was gay before he died because of the personalized BE PROUD in Richie's letter. SO ANYWAY, STREAM HALLELUJAH BY LEONARD COHEN and watch Anne of Green Gables.


End file.
